


Ouchies

by volpeanon



Category: Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, alex ate a masseur, and also ruining their soft moments, and many other things besides, cross has a bad back, love projecting my chronic aches onto my faves, referenced addiction to painkillers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:29:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22233331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volpeanon/pseuds/volpeanon
Summary: Alex and Cross have a nice moment and then it gets ruined, but what else is new in this shitshow of a city?
Relationships: Robert Cross/Alex Mercer
Comments: 9
Kudos: 46





	Ouchies

"Fucking hell." Cross grimaces, a hand on his back as he arches it gingerly and feels the muscles complain. He certainly outdid himself yesterday, and now he's paying for it, with the familiar flare of pain down his back and a general stiffness the length of his body. Alex looks up curiously, but Cross dismisses it as he downs the pills that live in one of his belt pouches "It's nothing."

"Uh huh."

"Just need a day to loosen up. It happens."

"You need a massage?"

Cross blinks at him. "What now?"

"Massage. I know how."

Of course he does. Cross won't ask how - or, more specifically, _who_. "I don't think that'll solve this. It's fine. I take stuff for it."

"I noticed, you take them so much you smell like them. It would help. You never heard of physical therapy?"

"I've had my fair share of it, so if it was going to help, it would've done it by now."

"You're so full of bull _shit_."

"What?"

"I bet you sat still for five minutes for them once a fortnight and then ran right off to get thrown around by infected."

Cross opened and closed his mouth. "Well- I had shit to do-"

Alex laughed; a real, full on one that Cross so rarely heard from him. "Come on." he stood up, gesturing "Shirt off, on your front."

"Yes, sir." it’s riddled with sarcasm but he’s doing it, so Alex doesn’t retort, just climbs over him once he’s on the bed. He starts with the shoulders. It’s quiet, because he’s concentrating on pulling up the muscle memory that he’s never actually used before, finding the knowledge on what to do, how hard to push, how to find the muscles that really need work. As he goes along, it turns out that Cross’s entire back is a nightmare. He breaks out of his little bubble, though, when he glances up at Cross’s face and sees the sceptically quirked eyebrow from the beginning has melted away. His eyes are closed, frown gone - he looks half asleep already.

“Not so mouthy now, huh?” Alex smothers his laugh.

“I’m humouring you.” it’s half mumbled.

“Uh huh.” he reaches Cross’s lower back, where the tension could easily be mistaken for concrete implants, and as his hands knead Cross lets out this moan that sounds absolutely lewd. Alex manages not to snort but he does raise an eyebrow at Cross, whose eyes are still shut, resolutely enjoying himself and ignoring Alex’s smugness.

After working away at the knots Alex finds the problem; the remnant of an injury to his spine that hasn't been treated kindly, and all the resulting chaos of a body trying its best to compensate. "When did you get this?" he asks quietly, fingers pressing. There’s a wealth of knowledge in his head on how to do this, what to feel for, but it also helps that he’s the strongest virus going right now, and no matter how suppressed, how well controlled the Wiseman strain is, up this close it knows who’s the boss and if Alex wants to know what’s going on inside Cross's body it’s going to tell him.

He uses this power cautiously, though, with unease curling in his gut, and the memory of the last time he used it looming at the back of his mind. Wouldn’t it have been good if he could make the infected stand down? If he could at least confine them, stop them trying to spread? In a moment of quiet idleness, Cross asleep against his side, he’d tried it. It was so hard to parse through all the voices of the hivemind, the impulses and the eagerness reaching out to him, but one had been louder than the rest, closer, right next to him, actually; the Wiseman strain, whispering in the dark. A little help from the ultimate expression of Blacklight was all it needed to eat away the drugs keeping it weak. And then? It could breed, and eat, and it wouldn’t hurt Cross, no, he wouldn’t feel a thing, but he’d be better, joined with us, one with us, filled with us, one of us-

"Fuck, _ow_ , Alex.”

He pulls his hands away sharply, holding his breath for a long moment. “Sorry. Just… trying to see how bad it is.”

“I got it years ago, it’s fine."

" _Right_. Who the hell looked at it?"

"What? How should I know?"

"Well they did a shit job."

Cross laughs drily. "There was an incident not long after. I didn't have time to sit on my ass doing nothing."

"And now you're addicted to painkillers, so how'd that work out for you?"

"Alright, alright - but if it gets the job done, it gets the job done."

"You gotta start acting like you expect to live past forty."

"Oh, _you're_ telling _me_ to take more care of myself?"

"I survived a nuke and I'm _fine_ ," Alex runs the balls of his hands hard up either side of Cross's spine, and feels him go like jelly with a soft almost-moan " _I'm_ tough. _You're_ a sack of skin filled with chunky soup. At least admit it."

"Yeah, well," Cross breathes a laugh "My soup's got me this far."

"And _I'd_ like," Alex leans down, kissing his shoulder "For it to get you a lot further. So how about you take a little care of it, now and again."

“I think I like you taking care of it.”

“Yeah, you always have liked me doing all the work.”

“ _Ouch_.” Alex’s hands linger to feel the laugh reverberate through Cross’s chest “I wasn’t sitting on my ass while you were out getting Taggart, you know.”

“Course not. You were probably on your back, fast asleep.”

“Are you mad at me?” Cross reaches back, a hand finding Alex’s, head cocked to fix him with one sleepy, amused eye “What did I do?”

“Nothing.” Alex’s voice softens slightly. He squeezes Cross’s hand. “You want me to do your legs? I bet you’re just as fucked up there.”

“You’ve heard my knees, right? I’m banned from crouching on black ops.”

Alex spends a while on his ass just to get him to ask if it’s necessary or if Alex is doing it for his own enjoyment (which he is), but after a while he realises that Cross is right on the edge of sleep. Alex shrugs to himself with a fond smile and gets lost in the rhythm of the work, listening to the memories. They bubble up small like the fizz in a soda, then grow, expanding and getting more vivid - now there are voices, lessons learnt and conversations had and they start to lose focus a bit. Alex tries to swat them away, they’re taking his attention too far from enjoying the here and now, and the thoughts are pressing, getting too loud, trying to tell him something- _let us out - let us eat - it will be easy - just take control and overwhelm and he won’t feel a thing just with us forever let us eat we're so hungry we want to eat and breed and **eat** \- _

He lurches backwards, off the bed, hitting the ground so hard the room trembles like his hands are trembling and his breath is rattling.

“Alex?” Cross is rolled over and alert, staring at Alex with those eyes that should cool him but don’t - because they keep flashing, keep flickering from green to red, human to not, bright and intelligent and him to empty, empty of life, like the mindless, shuffling things on the street below.

“I just gotta-” Alex stumbles to his feet and backs out the door - grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes until he can look up and Cross’s gaze is just green, just confused and worried “I’ll just- I’ll be back- I gotta-” he flees to the nearest window, wrenching it open and leaping out into the darkness. Cross is left with the cold air sweeping in, the roar of nighttime traffic, and the emptiness of the apartment.


End file.
